BabyStone – the soulful mash-up of Ms. Novena Carmel and Itai- croon the stage with a gathering of beautiful eccentricity. The sound captures a Jazz, Afro-Funk, Caribbean sensation that caters to cultural enthusiasts. Marcus Brock had the chance to sit down with lead singer, Ms. Novena Carmel. This retro-fitted chanteuse is no stranger to the grittiness of the soul and funk being that her father is Sly, of the revered band Sly and the Family Stone. But, even without the distinction she’s a show stopper! BabyStone’s syncopated rhythms and intuitive - yet fun- lyrical dynamics need be positioned on anyone’s playlist.

If you’re in the Los Angeles area, don’t forget to check out the Record Release Show at Temple Bar tonight. For more info, click here

Trace: How did you and Itai start working together?

Novena Carmel: Itai and I started working together a couple of years ago. He had a track he was producing and when I sang for him, we vibed. Eventually, we had enough material for a show. We didn’t even have a band yet, but I was like – let’s book a date! We then got a band together, booked a date, and rehearsed about five times before our first show.

T: Was the use of live musicians in your band on purpose or a routed intention?

NC: The band was on purpose because we like a BIG sound. I like a real sound, there’s a lot of “fake jewelry” out there so to speak, but BabyStone won’t turn your neck green! We are influenced by funk, soul, and Afro-Beat. So, the use of live sounds and music is very important to us. We are now looking to performing an acoustic set as well in future shows and albums. Itai loves Brazilian music and I have family there so we want to incorporate more of those sounds into our music, like in “Can I Be.”

Me, personally, my vocals will always be soulful but I have a yearning to do some wild, electronic beats. Our live album is many live instruments, similar to a live show but I also want to perform to synthetic sounds like keyboards and talk boxes. Just weirdness, not only sincere heart-to-heart beats. Our next recording will probably have those types of sounds, not completely out there, but different.

T: Some artists try and shy away from their parents’ music – does some of that sound/feel resonate in your music? How has that inspired BabyStone?

NC: As an artist I’m inspired by a lot of modern artists and those that have come before me. One of my favorite genres is the funk/soul of the time period when Sly & the Family Stone was writing their biggest hits. The sound is so influential and amazing to me that there’s no way I could shy away from it. It’s funky, it’s in your face and it’s timeless. That’s a lot of what BabyStone is or at least hopes to be.

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Guillermo Scott Herren (aka. Prefuse 73), an Atlanta artist of Catalan and Irish/ Cuban descent currently working in Spain, composes vaguely jazzy experimental hip hop tracks so beguiling they emit a strange sense of déjà vu. I remember the first album Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives with a story of my own, sitting on the roof of a college apartment during the slowly cooling early autumn, Prefuse slinking through the living room from the outdoors, in an oversized sweatshirt and bare feet. Something in the way Herren produces allows his music to feel both fresh and comfortable at the same time.

Prefuse 73 comes off much lighter than hip hop studies by similar artists Madlib, Danger Mouse and GirlTalk; almost Ibiza beachy at certain points. But make no mistake. His subtle musical repertoire makes for compositions far more far more substantive than the average gamine + electronica = eargasmic construction of comparable lounge and house. His music bares striking similarities to the speckled collages adorning his album covers: a classily psychedelic mix of harmony, texture, and balance.

Herren’s fourth album under the moniker Prefuse 73, Preparations, has a slightly more orchestral feel than his earlier work as he lends his classically trained instrumental ear to the P73 alias. The merger makes him a wise choice for the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Whitney Live series. The series showcases a new pairing of cutting-edge performers each weekend in addition to “pay-what-you-wish” Friday admission to the museum itself. Prefuse will play as part this June’s Wordless Music series with “adventuresome chamber music from the American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME)” and Jad Abumrad (Host of WNYC’s RadioLab) appearing as the MC.

Friday June 20

Whitney Museum

945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street
New York, NY 10021

For more info, click here

“Remember that time you were wasted and thought it would be a good idea to get a tattoo on your leg of Maury Povich shaking hands with Sasquatch, but your friends talked you out of it at the last second? Well, some people don’t have friends.”
– No Regrets: The Best, Worst, & Most #$%*ing Ridiculous Tattoos Ever

Traditionally, people use tattoos as a means of self-expression. Most times, this self-expression comes off as artistic and thoughtful. However, others just get way out of hand and come across strange as hell. Aviva Yael & P.M. Chen went on a year long crusade scoping out tattoo conventions and studios throughout the country in order to find the most random, comical, strange, terrifying, and downright out of this world tattoos.

What they found helped to create the gem that is No Regrets: The Best, Worst, & Most #$%*ing Ridiculous Tattoos Ever. The book contains countless images of all sorts of tattoos accompanied by hilarious captions. Each page makes for a laugh out loud moment, and solidifies itself as a must read.

Check it out here.

Chamecki/Lerner, Flying Lesson.

Been naughty lately? Haven’t had the opportunity to get your dose of creative energy? Well, we have the solution you need! TRACE Magazine, GANG UP! and Monkeytown present an evening of short films, videos, performances, and music to benefit top-notch NYC choreographers — Will Rawls, Milka Djordevich, and Nohemi Contreras — who have received a scholarship by DanceWEB Europe to participate in this summer’s ImPulsTanz festival in Vienna. The three get a 2/3 scholarship to cover tuition for dance workshops, tutorials and housing for the five-week festival but lack the funds for such things as, say, a plane ticket over there. (Money for food would also be nice.) So, simple as that: Help some of the best dancers in NYC get their wings and snag a free ticket to heaven (or a Get Out of Jail Free card, your call).

The event will take place Tuesday, June 10th at Monkeytown. There are two programs jam-packed with performances and multi-media presentations, all donated by the generosity of the NYC artistic community.

The first program, GANG UP: A Creative Congress, features short films and videos from Chamecki/Lerner, Rachel Johnson, Jeff Larson, Dance Gang. Choreographers Andrea Lerner and Rosane Chamecki present their first foray into film, “Flying Lesson,” which won the 2008 Jury Award at Lincoln Center’s Dance on Camera festival in January. Rachel Johnson, an award-winning animator, will show her Oscar-nominated short film “The Toll Collector.” Also appearing, “A Store of Sucking Stones,” the Beckett-based video farce, starring film and stage designer, Jeff Larson. Guerilla public performance company, Dance Gang, will also screen its video, “Shadow Dance.”

The first program also includes live performances by pop-obsessed Neal Medlyn, composer Karinne Keithley, experimental musician Jon Monlaci, dancer/choreographer Felicia Ballos, and the all-woman artband, JERK.

The second program of the evening, The Green Beat Box, will feature live sets from beatbox extraordinaire Adam Matta and avant-garde guitarist Eyal Moaz, as well as director of New Amsterdam Records, composer of critically acclaimed Now Ensemble and DJ, Judd Greenstein. Accompanying visuals will be from Dance Gang’s public video project, “Last in a Series,” a kinetic portrait of New York City.

Will Rawls is a site-specific performer, curator and installation artist who toured and performed nationally and internationally with Shen Wei Dance Arts in Venice, Israel and New York. He has also appeared with Tiffany Mills Company, with collaborator Katie Workum/Workum Dance League. Milka Djordevich is a performer/choreographer/co-curator of Movement Research Festival 2008 who studied at UCLA and at PARTS in Brussels. Nohemi Contreras is a performer/choreographer/curator who obtained a Masters from Tisch in Performance Studies.

First program begins at 7:30; the second at 10. Entrance fee for the first program is $40 or $60 with three-course dinner. Second program is $15, with a $10 minimum. All proceeds from the door will go to the three artists’ tuition.

Dearly Beloved,

We are gathering tonight and tomorrow night to get through this show called Shockadelica: Celebrating 50 years of his Royal Badness. The sirens from Brown Girls Burlesque are at it again bringing power to the purple people and that indescribable feminine mystique that could make Prince, himself, blush.

If you live in Erotic City, ever made a plea about how things would be if you were his Girlfriend, sang the Ballad of Dorothy Parker, or been concerned by the Sign O the Times, there is no other place you need to be tonight and tomorrow night.

Audience come quick! Audience come in a hurry. Tickets will sell out. $25 for general admission. $40 for the Royal Court.

The show starts at 11pm at the Zipper Factory, 336 west 37th street (in between 8th and 9th avenues).

And while you wait to cleanse yourself in the waters of the Brown Girls Burlesque, czech out our TRACE Insider video of BGB in action at their last nyc performance “Itches Brew…Sheroes Unleashed.”

Way back in November of last year, we did a post on BombIt!, a rapid-rising documentary that crossed the globe hunting down interviews with those elusive, top graffiti talents like Marka27 and Retna (L.A.); Cope 2, REVS and Taki 183 (NYC); Nishiba (Japan); Boleta and Jorge Tavares (Brasil); Blek le Rat (Paris); and about 40 others from the Netherlands, Mexico, Italy, Sweden, South Africa, Lebanon, Belgium, and Germany, to name a few.

Unprecedented in scope, BombIt! appeared to be the deserving heir to Wild Style’s throne when we saw it last November and now, with the TriBeCa Film Festival under it’s belt, Antidote Films by side and an L.A. Premiere this Friday night, BombIt! is blowing up bigger than ever.

The timing couldn’t be better. The graffiti culture documented by Charlie Ahearn’s classic was, in a sense, local to New York City and has since incubated on a global scale, rearticulated and reimagined on our local streets and neighborhood cultures.

Urban space still excludes folks and voices and as long as it does, graffiti will drop its bombs, but the messages and the means are changing. Hear what glocal graffiti means in the 21st century from the artists who give it voice.

BombIt! L.A. Premiere
Friday, June 6th
Laemmles Sunset 5
8000 Sunset Boulevard, West Hollywood
1:00//3:15//5:30//7:50//10:10pm

According to Greek Mythology, the king of Pessinus, King Midas, came across a Satyr named Silenus in his rose garden. King Midas treated him hospitably and kept him entertained with food and wine while Silenus told him stories and sung songs for ten days. On the eleventh day, King Midas brought Silenus back to his son Dionysus, who promised King Midas a reward of whatever he wanted. His choice was the ability to turn whatever he touched into gold…

In recent weeks, Barcelona has been experiencing its own taste of the Midas touch. Throughout the city, an unknown street artist has been painting ordinary everyday objects such as water fountains, public telephones and garbage cans gold.

So far, no developments have been made in regards to who the artist could be, but it’s been causing quite buzz. The press has referred to the unknown visionary as a guerilla or rebel artist because of his gutsy approach to a new take on visual art.

Yet, it comes off as something more than typical rebellion, and more like an attempt to open the eyes of the people to the beauty and value of their everyday surroundings.

I’m not a big fan of mixtapes. There’s something about uninspired verses and recycled beats that has always turned me off. But Wale’s Mixtape About Nothing, available for free since last Friday, is making me re-evaluate my skepticism.

From the onset, you can tell that the DMV (DC, Maryland, Virginia) representative has something to say; the tape is more than just self promotion with music in the background.

He starts off by taking a page from Jerry Seinfeld’s comedy book with “what’s the deal with…”-style observations about the state of hip-hop on a beat that samples the bass guitar used in the legendary sitcom’s opening sequence. Nods to the show are sprinkled throughout the mixtape: from snippets of some of the most memorable episodes to a Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Elaine) cameo to a poignant track, “The Kramer,” sparked by Michael Richard’s hateful Laugh Factory rant.

Yes, Wale, born Olubowale Folarin of Nigerian immigrants, did the damn the thing on the Mixtape About Nothing. I must admit that I didn’t always get what all the fuss was about: the magazine covers, the blogosphere ubiquity, the Mark Ronson co-sign and the numerous “next big thing” claims — all of which came without an album justifying them. I kinda understand now; his long-winded flow, wit and wordplay forced me to pay attention. He can spit and isn’t doing so because he can — he’s saying something.

Funny how much one can learn from a mixtape about nothing, huh? Download it here.

Since 1968, the Center for Traditional Music and Dance (CMTD) has been fighting a good fight with more than a little success. Seen by few and recognized by even fewer, the CMTD fights for immigrating artists who, like other talented and professional folks who change countries, often find not only that their credentials are belittled but that immigration sunders the connections that would enable them to continue living as culture-makers.

But the work of the CMTD is not just about the first generation; it’s about the next and the one after that. In their decades of operation, their courses and touring artists have sparked the American-born to remember additional roots — other ways to voice themselves and move through space.

Celebrating 40 years of reconnecting artists — and artists-to-be — living in diaspora in New York, the CMTD will host a benefit-cum-dance party next Thursday, June 5th at the Hiro Ballroom.

Performing are David Oquendo, whose Afro-Cuban, rock-inflected jams earned him a Grammy; Merita Halili and the Raif Hyseni Orchestra’s soprano Albanian folk tunes; the all-women Cherish The Ladies traditional Irish music troupe whom BBC named the Best Musical Group of the Year (during the benefit dinner); and Banghra’s sonic steel sweetheart, DJ Rekha.

Directions here and more information on the CMTD’s work here.

The CMTD Benefit and Dance Party
Thursday, June 5th
9 : 00 pm — 11 : 30 pm
The Hiro Ballroom
16th Street and 9th Avenue, NYC

Williamsburg, NYC wishes it was cool enough to host events like THiRSTNY multimedia extravaganza on the regular. With a deep commitment to transculturals, THiRSTNY pulls artists — installation, performance and visual — dancers, musicians, designers and writers together to find a common aesthetic in their mutual thirst to create.

Watch these media, missions and artistic and cultural backgrounds fuse together through live art and performances this Thursday in Williamsburg as the hipster set who inhabit the cool-glut neighborhood thirst on, wishing THiRSTNY came to call more often.

Drink up here and get directions here.

THiRSTNY
Galapagos Art Space
Thursday, May 29th
9 : 00 pm — ???
Williamsburg, Brooklyn